


Jude

by scapegrace74



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angst, F/M, Petfic, Post-Break Up, The X-Files Revival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:55:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26141458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scapegrace74/pseuds/scapegrace74
Summary: Look at what a conversation with our guinea pig hath wrought.  I have written pet-fic.  Post-IWTB.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 7
Kudos: 16





	Jude

He hated the supermarket, with its churlish check-out staff, over-stimulated toddlers, and the laser-show cacophony of mechanical bleating. But if he wanted to evade scurvy, he needed to make his way into town once a week to stock up on perishables. The only nonperishable organic item in their house these days was Mulder himself, and even that was worthy of debate. Something must be wasting away, to leave him feeling so hollow inside.

The posters near the exit doors were usually good for a few minutes’ delay before breaking a solitary trail home again. Bassoon lessons. Midget AAA winter lacrosse league. Puppies for sale. He tore one of the remaining phone numbers from the ragged paper and stuffed it in his pocket. When they first moved in, she had commented that the property was ideal for a dog. Another missed prompt he hadn’t heeded until it was too late to matter.

* * *

It was Saturday. Noteworthy only in that neither the mail nor the newspaper got delivered that day, so when he heard tires on the gravel outside, he reached for his gun. She stood on their porch, backlit by a grey November day that still made him squint, after the gloom of his study. He re-safetied his Glock out of habit as his pulse beat systolic joy and a baseline of diastolic resentment. She had no right to show up here and remind him why he couldn’t draw a deep breath anymore.

“I tried to call, but the number is disconnected,” she explained, and he was pleased to note she was both worried about him and embarrassed by her worry.

“Yeah, well, no-one uses the landline anymore, and I’m on a budget. Single income family and all that.” He enjoyed the subtle flinch at the word “family”. He was an asshole.

Before he could land any more verbal punches, the scrapping of eager paws on hardwood announced a new arrival from the kitchen. A head butted the back of his calf, asking to be scratched.

“What’s that?” Scully asked with some consternation.

“It’s a puppy, Scully. A German shorthair pointer, actually. His name is Jude.” 

“Are you pet-sitting for… someone?”

“No, he’s mine. I got him a few week’s ago, and he’s been eating his way through our, I mean my furniture ever since.”

He felt an upsurge of pride at Scully’s dumb-founded look. For the first time in perhaps years, he’d managed to defy her expectations. She had pictured him alone, licking his wounds and cursing the gods. She was wrong. He’d been licking his wounds and cursing Jude’s piranha-like teeth as they tore through his three hundred dollar dress shoes.

“Was there a particular reason you drove all this way, Scully? I’m alive, as you can see. I didn’t forget to pay our, I mean my phone bill while I cried in my beer because you left. Jude and I were just about to head out back to play fetch before it starts to rain, so…”

He watched her leave, and it hurt just as badly, only in a different place. He knew he had been stupidly cruel to her, but it was a choice between cruelty and curling into ash like a sheet of paper left too close to a fire.

* * *

The wind blew the season’s final harvest of dead leaves across the backyard as he opened the door.

“Go on outside, buddy. Do your business. It’s too cold for a walk today.”

Jude sniffed the biting air and emitted a little whine of misery, but clambered down the steps anyway.

Time slipped away from him. Minutes seemed to pass either too quickly or not at all these days. When he finally called Jude back inside, there was no answer but the plaintive dirge of the wind in barren oak trees. Muttering, he grabbed a jacket and jammed his feet into an old pair of running shoes with a partially gnawed sole. Fifteen minutes later he was concerned. By the time dusk deepened the sky to coal, he was frantic. He went inside only long enough to grab the high beam flashlight they used in power outages, and rushed back into the thickly brambled woodland behind the house calling Jude’s name into the answerless dark. 

It was midnight before he dragged himself home, wet, weary and trapped in a labyrinth of past and present remorse. Another trusting creature he’d abandoned to the night. He opened the front door to check the porch one last time, and a piece of paper fluttered to the floor.

_Hello neighbour. Your dog was in my pasture, trying to flush some pheasant, only they were our chickens, not pheasants. Until he knows the difference, you should keep him leased. Come by tomorrow to pick him up. Tim Burleau. P.S. We’re the green mailbox._

He sagged to the ground in relief, shaking from delayed sorrow and lack of food. How many more second chances could he expect, before the well ran dry?

* * *

He conversed with Jude as they ran along the gravel shoulder, their tandem breaths condensing and evaporating into the chill.

“It wasn’t that the supernatural spooked her, if you’ll excuse the pun. Far from it. Scully’s spine is weapon’s grade. Maybe she worried we were the butt of some cosmic joke, like we were one monster away from them revealing the hidden camera and smacking on a laugh track. I dunno. Just because I signed up for ridicule and infamy doesn’t mean she did. I tried to let her know how much I valued her, but what is that? The appreciation of a confirmed lunatic? I was happy when she got to practice medicine again. Proud when her brilliance was recognized in a positive way. I might have told her that too. I dunno.”

Jude looked up at him with those liquid amber eyes, tongue lolling from his mouth.

“Yeah, you’re right. Probably not.”

* * *

Thunder shook the house’s timbers like matchsticks, and Jude tore around the room, looking for a place to hide.

“Come here, buddy,” he beckoned, tapping the forbidden haven of the couch cushion. Jude bounded eagerly next to him and lay his muzzle trustingly on his thigh.

“I don’t like storms, either, Jude. Too many bad associations. But if you pick a good memory to focus on, it helps a bit. The first time Scully believed me was during a rainstorm. That was a good day. It didn’t bring my sister back, and it didn’t save me from becoming an alien dissection kit, but life is long and you have to measure these things on a logo-rhythmic scale, where you factor for how much chance you had to influence the outcome. Thunderstorms, sadly, are deaf to our suffering. People, and animals, are not.”

He scratched the velveteen flags of Jude’s ears and considered what he’d just said. He’d spent the past months dwelling on the reasons Scully had left. Perhaps it was time to remember what had made her stick by him for so long.

* * *

The battered brass menorah flames glowed warmly in the front window, and the room smelled of baking Virginia ham and cloves. No-one could ever accuse him of religious uniformity. The doorbell rang and Jude let out a baritone woof, rather than his usual alto yap. Forty pounds of leggy pubescent dog looked momentarily confused.

Mulder made his way to the door, commenting, “Time for that dreaded vet’s visit, Jude, before your handsome mug catches some bitch’s eye.”

He opened the door to find his erstwhile partner and lover, bundled to the nose in winter garb. The coldest Christmas Eve on record, the TV meteorologist had said, but he had plenty of wood stacked on the porch, and a glowing fire in the hearth.

“Scully, hey. Come on in before you freeze.”

“Thanks. Here, take these.” She handed him a large casserole dish and a plastic bag through which he could make out gaily wrapped presents and his stocking from the years they had celebrated the holidays together, with Mulder embossed across the upper hem. When had she taken that to her place?

Scully bent to grab a bulky item from the porch and entered the room with it held before her. Jude approached as Scully squatted and extended her ungloved hand. After a few careful sniffs Jude gave her a hearty lick, and she scratched behind his ears.

“Merry Christmas, Jude. I got you a bed, since I know firsthand how cold these floors get in winter. Or does Mulder let you sleep in bed with him?”

“Mulder is pretty choosy about who shares his bed. Jude is only allowed in there during thunderstorms or after the Knicks lose, when we could both use some comfort.” 

She gazed up at him from her lowered position and he felt his heart hurtling through space like a wayward satellite, desperately seeking the gravity he found only in her eyes. 

He could go on without her. He knew that now. It wasn’t the life he wanted, but he hadn’t been living the life he wanted before, with her at his side. He’d been throwing logs on the pyre of his past, while the present slowly starved for lack of oxygen beside the flames.

“Did you want to stay for dinner, or do you need to get back into the city? The ham is about ten minutes from done, and I got a jar of those cherries you swear are carcinogens.”

“I actually brought leftovers from Mom’s. She wanted to make certain you had a decent Christmas dinner.” “There’s enough to share,” she added after a moment.

“Are the presents from her as well?” he asked, as he started to set a second place at the dining table, trying hard not to fixate on the symbolism.

“No, those are from me.”

“Thank you, Scully. That was really thoughtful. Especially after… everything.” He concentrated on slicing the ham, re-heating the leftovers in the microwave. Anything to avoid looking at her and seeing her pity. A small hand rested on his back.

“I never blamed you, Mulder. Not for what happened, and not for how you reacted. I didn’t want to hurt you…” she broke off, swallowing noisily.

“I know, Scully. I think I always knew, but it took a while to let myself acknowledge it. You put years of effort into trying to keep me afloat. You wouldn’t abandon that without just cause. You just needed to breathe.”

“Yes. Exactly.”

They sat across from each other at the farmhouse table, trying to remember how to speak easily about commonplace things, how to share without it feeling like a burden was being handed off. Jude watched on from his new bed.

“Why did you decide to call him Jude?” she asked as they were cleaning up.

“After the Beatles song. You know. Take a sad song and make it better,” he sang quietly. He didn’t continue. Scully knew the lyrics as well as he did.

“I thought maybe you named him after Saint Jude, the patron saint of lost causes.”

He froze, and a caustic retort about the saint for abandoned life partners rose to his lips, but he bit it back.

“I might be playing the longest game of karmic Snakes and Ladders ever, and the cosmic odds-maker has me at 99 to 1, but I wouldn’t say that means I should be given up for lost. Would you, Scully?”

“You’ve never given up on anything you care about, Mulder. I hope you know how much I admire that, and that I’m trying to follow your example.”

He walked her to the door, helped her don her parka, and stood in the glow of the porch until her tail lights had disappeared around the bend. Jude stood beside him, shivering in the night air.

“Come on, buddy. It’s warm inside. She’ll be back, and I happen to know she loves a good game of fetch.”


End file.
